


Lucky

by chronicAngel



Series: Leaves in the Summer [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Babies, But on the other hand you've got that Major Character Death, Canonical Character Death, Cats, Children, F/M, Implied/Referenced Animal Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Missions, Moving In Together, On the one hand you've got that G rating, Storms, Survival, Talking, Team, Team Bonding, There's absolutely nothing graphic in this fic though I promise, Toddlers, Uchiha Massacre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-05 15:58:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13391241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: "Kichi, hm? Well, he's certainly lucky..."





	Lucky

The rain beats hard against the top of their tent, which is only slightly shielded by the numerous tree branches of Konoha's forest which surrounds them. Mikoto thinks that they should keep moving, but Yasu slipped in the mud and twisted his ankle about an hour into the storm and Torune-sensei insisted that they stop so he could rest, which of course left she and Shikuro to do all of the work while their sensei ran off on whatever fake errand he was claiming to do this time. He returns during the second hour of the storm, and she is admittedly thankful when he brings wood that is mostly dry.

Forming the hand signs, she announces her katon in time for Shikuro to pick up Yasu and clear out of the way, just in case. There are burn scars on his leg from an incident when she forgot, and she doesn't intend to relive it any time soon.

Having a fire in the tent, even a small one, is a dangerous game when it isn't contained, and she notices Torune-sensei regularly using small wind style jutsu to waft the smoke out of the tent as though she won't notice. Still, it keeps her teeth from chattering with the biting cold of the rain outside, and even overly-analytical Aburame Shikuro: Legendary Stick in the Mud has stayed quiet about the decision thus far. She suspects he is more worried about Yasu that he has been letting on.

"So," she teases her injured teammate, leaning close to his face. "How are you treating that darling cousin of mine?"

Yasu's eyes go wide as though he's been accused of something, and, like she was anticipating, he leans far back away from her. "Toyotama? She's, uh... fine?" She grins wickedly at him, leaning in and poking his sides until he's squirming away from her. "Stop! Stop it!" He's laughing though, and she grins between him and Shikuro, who has always been terrible at hiding his small smiles. After another minute, she relents, scooting away from him to tend to the fire and sitting on her knees. "You're crazy, Uchiha," he kids, and she sticks her tongue out at him in turn. She can recall a time in the Academy when she hated Yasu and would have liked nothing better than to see him killed, or at the very least kicked out of school. Now, she is happy to call him one of her best friends.

She turns toward Shikuro next, and then squints. "You got any interesting stories, Aburame? Some sort of baggage you've somehow kept from us?" She can just barely see his eyes narrow behind his glasses, and she's one of the only people who has ever been able to do so. He shakes his head once, and she doesn't press the matter. "Didn't think so. Looks like it's up to me to be the entertaining one again."

She gets halfway through a story about Hazuki and their younger cousin Tamayori when she hears what sounds like a wailing infant outside of their tent. Immediately, her instincts act faster than her brain does, though not fast enough that she forgets to grab her kunai.

Shikuro follows her out of the tent, and Yasu stumbles out after him. Torune-sensei either trusts them to handle her and whatever is out here enough to leave them alone, or is that tired of their antics for the evening. She wouldn't be particularly surprised if the answer was both. The rain pounds against the top of her head and her shoulders, and her shirt is thoroughly soaked within moments, but she activates her sharingan to continue searching for the source of the sound. Determining it not to be a threat, she takes a cautious step toward the woods, images of Yasu slipping in the mud and twisting his ankle flashing through her mind.

She spots it after a minute: A small kitten wails with the lungs of a fierce dragon, its mother laying still close by. She moves without thinking, faster than Shikuro can catch her, and picks up the kitten, clinging to life with everything he has. Holding him to her chest, she moves back to the tent much slower, wary of the especially slick mud and the whipping branches of trees nearby. She is interrupted on her path back by a branch breaking in front of her with the force of the wind, and has to cut through a dense patch of thickets to return, stinging scrapes coating her arms and legs while the kitten settles his face in the warmth of her chest despite her drenched blouse. Her maternal instinct still hasn't worn off, and when she enters the tent, she is quick to steal her sensei's regulation flak jacket to wrap up the tiny creature, who has begun to mewl for its lost mother, and for once is thankful that someone in her childhood squad has always taken to wearing one.

* * *

She smiles gratefully at Shikuro as he helps her transfer the last of her belongings to her new home while she cradles Kichi in her arms. He's grown into a fat cat in the two years since she found him, with a thick layer of grey fluff and a too-entitled attitude that she finds admittedly more endearing than she knows it probably should be. He purrs into her chest, snoozing. Torune-sensei steps out of the house with a look somewhat like approval, and the three of them being together makes her chest ache once more with the loss of Yasu. "Thanks so much for helping, you two."

"Being here means not being forced to engage in wedding planning with Akidu and mother," Shikuro cringes while Torune-sensei just nods. Mikoto has heard more and more about her friends and cousins her age having marriages arranged, or else looking at settling down for those who don't come from noble clans and have a choice in the matter. As she thinks to how little she knows about her husband, she envies her friends who were allowed to make that choice. _Speak of the devil,_ she thinks as the man who seems to have a perpetual scowl approaches, and her childhood teammates promptly scatter. _Traitors._

She smiles at him, though it grows strained as he immediately looks past her to the last of her things inside. Ultimately, she didn't have much to bring, and it only took the single afternoon to transfer everything. When he finally looks at her, he pulls a face. "You have a cat."

She notices that it's not a question, and she straightens. "His name is Kichi," she says, and he purrs louder upon hearing his name. Scratching between his ears, she gives her husband a pointed look.

"Don't tell me you're keeping that thing." He continues to look disgusted. She thinks this is one of the things she would have liked to know before she married him, even if she has since acknowledged that she would not have been able to get out of the arrangement. _It should be a great honor,_ she thinks. _Marrying the head of the clan's son is something every Uchiha woman dreams of, and yet he's so..._ She watches as he scowls, and she wonders if he's ever smiled in his life. _Stony._

"You know, cats are the animals of the Uchiha clan."

Without missing a beat, he glances doubtfully at the fat cat in her arms and says, "Is he a ninneko?" She shakes her head, holding him closer to her chest defensively, and Fugaku scoffs. He gives the animal a final once over, then looks at her face. For the first time since they got married two days ago, she thinks her husband has some minimal understanding of her, or at the very least must see the hope in her eyes and take some pity on her, because he scoffs and says, "You may keep him."

She wants to say that she doesn't need his permission. "Thank you," she says instead. He stares pointedly at the ground.

* * *

She smiles and leans against Fugaku, holding her giggling three-week-old high in the air. "Who's my baby?" She coos. "Who's my beautiful boy?" Itachi squeals and she brings him down to her face to rub her nose against his lovingly. Her husband spares a glance in their direction, and then looks pointedly back at the scroll in his hands, muttering something about Kirigakure. She's not surprised, considering his continued and very vocal hatred of the village. Still, she elbows him in the side gently, and he glances over at her out of the corner of his eye before deciding to put the paper down. Itachi makes a gurgling noise and reaches his pudgy hands toward his father's face. His scowl quickly melts as he takes their infant.

"What are you looking at?" She hums.

Making a face, Fugaku spares a glance toward the scroll from where he has been watching his son's every squirming, drooling move. "You wouldn't understand it."

"Excuse me?" She says, and he looks rightfully startled. "Need I remind you that I'm a jōnin? And that I was promoted to such at fourteen, which is two years younger than _you_ were when you reached that rank?" Stubbornly, she plows forward as he opens his mouth to respond, "Or that my specialty before I gave up life as a shinobi to marry you and to raise our son was infiltration and _strategic analysis?_ So, _my dearest husband,_ do you think you could _try_ to explain to me what it is you think I won't understand?"

Rather than say anything, he cradles Itachi, who has gone completely quiet, to his chest and pushes the scroll closer to her. She smiles at him once more, but doesn't have time to look over it before Kichi jumps into her lap, bumping his head against her hand and meowing loudly when Itachi tries to reach for him. The cat leans cautiously close to Itachi's face and sniffs curiously as though he's still trying to figure out who this new intruder is. Then again, this is really the first time the two have been allowed contact, and she is amazed Fugaku is allowing it.

Kichi springs backward when Itachi leans forward and their noses touch.

* * *

She watches her two-year-old son pad across the floor after her now eleven-year-old cat, snatching at his fluff and laughing loudly. "Sasuke," she warns, tone low, and he pauses to look over at her. "Be nice to the kitty." He nods and tiptoes again toward the cat, who has stopped running to lift his leg in the air and lick along it. She watches them from of the corner of her eye simply because she is worried Sasuke is going to get ideas from Kichi's bathing routine, but doesn't allow it to distract her from the scroll in front of her just yet. As per usual, it is addressed to her husband, but she has taken to reading his correspondences and he is off training with Itachi now that the boy has been promoted to genin. She worries every day that Fugaku is going to be made to fight in the ongoing war, or even worse yet that Itachi will be sent out now that he has officially graduated from the Academy.

She tears her eyes away from the scroll when she hears a _thump,_ only to see that Sasuke has caught the cat in his arms, but subsequently overbalanced and fallen over. After all, she's sure the poor thing must weigh at least a third of what he does, with Sasuke being small for his age and the cat only growing fatter as the years continue to pass. She expects Kichi to scratch him and run away the way he might have when Itachi was younger, but the cat seems resigned to his fate, if startled, when Sasuke pets him only slightly rougher than he probably should.

She glances back to the report. _Finally, we regret to inform you of the passing of Uchiha Toyotama and her team. Though they fought valiantly, their lives were taken by Kumogakure jōnin during a failed infiltration mission. No remains were found._ She feels sick. This is not the first family member she has lost to the war, but it is the first of the names they have received that she truly recognizes since Obito. The Uchiha are a big clan, and the only members she grew to know before her marriage (and her husband's subsequent inheritance of the title of clan head) were her siblings and first cousins. She feels like her heart is in the pit of her stomach.

"Okā-san? What's wrong?"

Her son stands in front of her with furrowed eyebrows, an expression that reminds her so much of her husband that she could almost laugh. He holds Kichi under his front legs, and his back legs stick out awkwardly and drag against the floor.

She leans forward to pick the both of them up, burying her face in Sasuke's hair. "It's nothing, sweetheart. Don't worry about it." He doesn't seem convinced, but doesn't protest her answer, and Kichi lifts his head up to sniff her nose while she just sits there and holds the two of them for a minute. She is thankful that, at the very least, her younger son hasn't even started the Academy yet, and is thus much too young to be sent out to fight.

"Do you want to play with us?" He asks after a minute, squirming until he's out of her lap and standing on the floor with Kichi once again forced to sit in an awkward position. She laughs into her hand and gets up without answering, letting Sasuke grab her hand and drag her outside. The area that Sasuke and Itachi usually play in is supposed to be a garden, as maintained by the wives of the clan heads since the village was founded. She has never been a gardener, though, and it has been dead for years.

He jumps between stones to a small stream toward the back of the yard, then puts Kichi down to pick up one of the cattails at the edge of the water. Then he dances it through the air and she has to hold in a snort as the cat chases it.

They end up running around with the thing for hours, and she their willing, captive audience. Kichi falls asleep on the porch eventually, and she is picking Sasuke up to take him inside and start on dinner when Fugaku and Itachi arrive, glancing between the boy dozing against her chest and the sleeping cat on the porch.

Later, after Itachi and Sasuke have gone to sleep, as she lays on her side in bed and strokes the cat while Fugaku changes into clothes to sleep in, he tells her about the progress report as he scans over it, though they both know that she read it. She isn't supposed to, and she supposes he prefers to keep up the pretense. "Itachi's training is going well. It's only a matter of time before he's as good at shurikenjutsu as you were," he says absently. As he finishes the report, he looks at her. "Are you okay?"

* * *

Sasuke shivers.

It isn't cold outside. In point of fact, he had been complaining to himself about how warm it was when he was walking home from the Academy. Now, though, it feels as though any ability to retain his own body heat has been sucked away by his brother, who only hours ago he had been striving to achieve the same great lengths as during his training. Itachi's words stick out in the back of his mind even as Lord Third tries to talk to him.

_Run away... run away... and cling to your pitiful life. And then some day, when you have the same eyes as I do, come before me._

He can't shake it from his head. His brother's speech about what a failure he is, about how weak he is, about how a foolish little boy like him isn't even worth killing. It makes him angry, of course, but it mostly just makes him more sad than he already was, and more than a bit guilty. This is the day he's lost his entire family by some means or another, and he is childishly reflecting on his brother's cold words rather than his mother's cold corpse that lay in a puddle of her own blood in their living room. The thought of Itachi killing their mom makes him sick to his stomach, and so instead he thinks about the more trivial things; the sorts of things his mother would think about, were she not dead on the floor. _Will the blood stains ever come out of the wood?_ The thought that they might not scares him.

"Well, it looks like you aren't the only one who survived." He perks up at that, his eyes widening as he straightens his whole body. Whoever the last member of his clan outside of himself is, he wants them to know that he's dignified. He's all that's left of the head of the clan's family, and despite this great tragedy, he doesn't want to dishonor his family's name by acting like a child during such a trying time, even if he is only seven. Glumly, he knows that Itachi wouldn't be caught dead crying over even an event as huge as this. He remembers when Shisui died only last year and everyone was accusing him of murdering one of his only friends as a child, and even in the face of all of that he never shed a tear that Sasuke saw. No one is going to accuse him of this crime, and he's still blubbering. His father would be disappointed. _Yet another way you don't measure up._

It's the cat.

When he looks around to find who Lord Third is talking about, the only other living thing in the Uchiha district that he sees is Kichi. The bob of his tail is twitching, and there's blood on his face as though he has been sniffing around the bodies. With an immense feeling of disappointment, he leans down to pick up the animal, sniffing and trying to stay dignified even as he knows that there is no other real Uchiha here who will judge him for it. Sickeningly, the first thought that comes to his head, like an instinct or a mantra that he's just grown used to repeating, is _I want my brother._

"His name is Kichi," he says, testing out his voice for the first time since before the Hokage arrived. He still hasn't shaken the feeling that he's going to throw up any time that he opens his mouth, but burying his face in the head of the cat, he starts to feel what might be deemed "comfort" for the first time since Itachi's parting words.

"Kichi, hm? Well, he's certainly lucky..." The old man pauses for a second, looking thoughtful, and then crouches in front of Sasuke. The Uchiha almost worries that he won't be able to get back up again, despite the legends he's heard all his life about the man. After all, he's the son of the shinobi that Sasuke is named for. "My grandson has been looking to get a cat. If you'd like... if he brings back too many memories..." He gives Sasuke a meaningful look, and the boy pauses. He shakes his head, holding Kichi closer.

* * *

Sunset's pink and gold hues are starting to streak the sky, and it's the earliest he's gotten home in a while. His knuckles are bleeding, his hands swollen, and he wants to train more, but he knows he won't be of any use on the mission with his newly-assigned team tomorrow if he breaks his fingers.

He's also of the opinion that he won't be of much use if he doesn't eat anything, but he gets the sense that his squad's leader is the sort of person who would just _know_ and to be quite honest, he doesn't want to test that theory.

Kichi, on the other hand, gets to eat.

While he's dumping the cat's food into a bowl, and then dumping the leftover takoyaki in the fridge that was to be his dinner this evening on top of that, he reflects on the story his mother told him of how she got the cat when he was a child. She had been on her way home from a mission with her old squad to escort the daimyō and his daughters to the eldest's wedding to some Kumo noble when, it being monsoon season, a sudden storm had broken out. Their mission had already been completed, so after one of her teammates got injured, they'd just camped out in the woods when she heard a noise like a baby crying. That was Kichi. She'd always spoken so highly of her old squad, and he wonders if they were anything like his when they were assigned to the same team.

Team 7 consists of himself, the top of his class and unfortunately for him the apple of many of his classmates' eyes, as well as Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura, and Hatake Kakashi. "Naruto's such an idiot, Kichi," he starts, huffing as he sits next to the bowl and the cat begins to eat, sniffing the takoyaki suspiciously. "It's like somebody took Obito-onii-san's worst traits and threw them in a blender with an infant. He's constantly running off his mouth and never seems to run out of energy, and just when you think he's finally learning his lesson about something, he runs off and does it again. It's almost like he wants everyone to look at him and think, _'Wow, what a complete moron.'_ " He would normally cross his arms here, but instead moves one hand to pet the cat.

"And Kakashi's encouraging it. Naruto just runs around and does dumb things and he sits back reading his stupid book. What even is _Icha Icha Paradise_? It doesn't sound like something you should read when you're with company," he sniffs disapprovingly, and Kichi sneezes as he investigates the takoyaki again. "And what kind of a jōnin can't dodge a stupid chalk eraser in a door?"

Such a juvenile prank is exactly the sort of thing he should have the reflexes to avoid, and yet he can distinctly remember Kakashi's flat look as the eraser made contact with his head. He's just hoping that Kakashi was trying to look unimpressive so they would underestimate them for whatever mission they're going on tomorrow.

He thinks about Sakura next, and isn't sure what to report. Granted, he doesn't need to give a dutiful account of his day to the cat every evening after he's finished training, but it feels like his responsibility since Kichi is the closest thing to family he has left. "Sakura is... annoying," he starts, curling his lip. That's the first and most accurate word that comes to mind. "She's probably the best one, but that's such a low bar you have to watch out to make sure you don't trip. I mean, she's not stupid or loud like Naruto, but she's always clinging to me. If she paid half as much attention to training as she did to boys, she'd be a better ninja than Itachi."

He says that, but he's not actually sure about it. There's still a largely childish part of him that's not sure anyone could be as good as his older brother, and he's determined to be the first who is if it is possible. At the same time, he's noticed Sakura around almost as long as he can remember, tagging along behind him and acting like she wanted him to notice her as opposed to other girls who had the courtesy to act like they were being sneaky. Just as he starts to consider getting up to shower, the sweat beginning to dry on his skin in the sticky, uncomfortable sort of way that always makes him itchy, Kichi climbs into his lap. Normally, he would just shove the cat off and get up anyway, but he rests a paw on Sasuke's forehead and it makes him freeze up as though this might mean something, like the cat is somehow being possessed by his brother and trying to pass off some knowledge about his teammates after his rambling. He ends up sitting there with Kichi in his lap until he falls asleep on the cold, hardwood floor.

* * *

When she wakes on a cold bench at the edge of the village, it is with a scream of Sasuke's name and a disorienting sense of panic. Her vision is bleary and she recognizes the sensation from long nights when she fell asleep after arguments with her parents where she has cried herself to sleep. There are dried tear trails on her face and she scrubs at them with her nails until she can feel her cheeks going red and raw.

Sniffing, her brain slowly starts to catch up with the rest of her and she remembers the events from the previous night. _"I... I love you with all my heart! If you were to stay here with me, there would be no regrets... because every day we'd do something fun, we'd be happy I swear! I would do anything for you! So... Please just stay with me!" He gives her a look that she thinks is something like pity._

_She doesn't even see him move. One second, he is standing in front of her while she's pouring her heart out to him, and the next he's gone, only she knows exactly where he is. Rather than turning around to face him, she stands completely still, although she can't remember ever being afraid of him. Her green eyes are bright and wide, but everything is still blurry with her tears. She can feel his breath against the back of her neck as he whispers, low enough that only she would be able to hear even if someone were watching them, "Sakura... thank you."_

She can feel the tears running down her face again. Her skin is hot and she feels disgusting, but she doesn't cry like a child like she did last time for something that she won't be able to have; she just wipes at them with the back of her hand and determinedly turns around to march back into the village. Her march, though, turns into a run, which then turns into a desperate sprint. She can barely feel it as her feet carry her to the Hokage's office at a speed she normally reserves for missions (and it still doesn't match the speed he showed in closing the distance between them), but she knows where she is when the doors burst open in front of her. "Lady Hokage!"

"Sakura?" Tsunade-sama sounds surprised to see her.

For the next hour, she tells Tsunade what happened, that Sasuke is gone, who she suspects he's gone with, and then she is being ushered to sit down so the Hokage may be able to assemble a team to go after him and Sakura can tell them exactly what happened. Eventually, she is released with a gentle, "Sakura... you can go home now." That's not where she ends up going, though. She doesn't want to go to her home. She doesn't want her mother to scream at her for not coming home last night because Haruno Mebuki doesn't know that she was on a bench at the edge of the village last night after the boy she loves knocked her out. She doesn't want to tell her mother what happened and have her parents treat her like something fragile who needs to be handled delicately for the next few days.

She hardly knows where she is when finally pulls herself out of her thoughts. She only recognizes it as the now-completely-abandoned Uchiha district when she continues walking through and sees the _uchiwa_ on drapes and painted on the sides of empty buildings filled with ghosts of memories that send shivers up her spine. A small part of her wonders which one of them was Sasuke's.

She turns to leave when she hears what sounds like a baby crying. If she were Naruto, she might scream about ghosts and run away. As it stands, she searches everywhere for the source with wide eyes, filled with concern. What she finds is the fattest, fluffiest grey cat she's ever seen. "You look like you've been through a lot... I'll take care of you."


End file.
